San Antonio's biggest whiskey-tasting party is settling in for its 11th year, and this time it's happening on a museum campus celebrating its own major milestone. Whiskey Business takes over the Witte Museum on Friday, Aug. 21, from 8 to 11 p.m., pouring Texas spirits, beer, and wine across the museum's dinosaur galleries and outdoor grounds while local restaurants serve up unlimited food and drink samples.
The event, presented by the San Antonio Current, launched in 2015 and has grown over the past decade into a multi-tier festival that funnels ticket sales toward the Witte Museum's educational programming, according to the Current. Last year's edition marked a full decade of the tasting event, and this year's installment lands squarely within the museum's 100th-anniversary year, which the Witte has been marking with dedicated exhibitions and public programs since the institution first opened its doors on October 8, 1926, per mySA. Hoodline previously reported on the museum's centennial celebrations in a story on how the Steves family stole the show during the anniversary programming.
A Museum Built to Handle a Crowd
Tickets for Whiskey Business run $80 to $155 and are available online at sawhiskeybusiness.com, per the same account. General admission entry begins at 8 p.m. and includes access to live music, sipping sessions seminars, and unlimited food and drink samples. VIP ticket holders get in an hour early at 7 p.m. and receive extras that include a Whiskey Business rocks glass, swag bags, complimentary valet parking, rare spirit sampling, access to an exclusive VIP lounge, and admission to the sipping sessions seminar.
The festival occupies the entire Witte Museum campus, a 10-acre riverside site that underwent a 10-year renovation and expansion completed in 2017, transforming it into a 174,000-square-foot facility built to host large indoor-outdoor events, according to Google Arts & Culture. That capacity matters on an August night in San Antonio: the museum provides indoor access so attendees can cool off between rounds of tastings, per the Current's report.
Texas Spirits Take Center Stage
The vendor lineup leans heavily on homegrown Texas distilling. Ranger Creek, one of the participating vendors, was founded in San Antonio in 2010 by TJ Miller, Mark McDavid, and Dennis Rylander and became the first business in Texas to operate as a combined brewery and distillery, according to KSAT. Hoodline has previously featured the brewery among the city's top budget-friendly and highest-ranked spots.
Also pouring is Maverick Whiskey, which opened in July 2019 inside the restored 1918 Lockwood National Bank building at 115 Broadway — a site that sits on the original downtown San Antonio homestead of Texas Declaration of Independence signer Samuel Maverick, according to the San Antonio Report. The distillery's spirits are made using 200-year-old family recipes originally recorded in the personal diaries of Samuel and Mary Maverick after the couple moved to San Antonio from South Carolina in 1835, the Report notes. Hoodline covered Maverick Whiskey's 2019 debut among the city's freshest new businesses at the time.
Rounding out the vendor list are Chapline Distillery and Bending Branch Winery. Chapline, based in Bulverde, is a veteran-owned, grain-to-glass nanodistillery founded by retired Navy submariner Mike Chapline, producing small-batch bourbons made with Texas Panhandle barley and local South Texas white corn, per the Texas Whiskey Trail. Bending Branch Winery, established in Comfort in 2009 by the Young family and long known for its Tannat wines, has expanded into spirits with its Bending Branch 1840 line of curated, Texas-aged bourbons, according to the winery.
A Growing Industry Behind the Glass
The festival's Texas-heavy pour list reflects a spirits industry that has grown into a significant piece of the state economy. A University of Texas at San Antonio study commissioned by the Distilled Spirits Council found that Texas distillers generated nearly $2 billion in economic output in 2020 while supporting 4,900 jobs statewide, as reported by the San Antonio Express-News. Nationally, the American Craft Spirits Association counted 2,282 active craft distillers operating in the United States by 2025, up from fewer than 100 total U.S. distilleries two decades earlier, per the Distilled Spirits Council.
All ticket sales proceeds benefit the Witte Museum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has been dedicated to preserving history and the humanities in San Antonio, according to the Current's report. Organizers say the event helps the museum continue educating locals and tourists alike, tying a night of Texas whiskey, beer, wine, and live music directly back into the institution's mission as it marks its first full century in the city.
